When Is Cancer Considered a Chronic Illness?

These days, cancer is always a chronic illness. Sometimes a few patients are diagnosed right before they get really sick, but that's the exception not the rule, most of the time those patients have had cancer for a very long period of time before that had symptoms that didn't quite get attention but the clock were already started.

So, for just about everybody today cancer is a chronic illness, it's very rare that somebody finds out that they have cancer and then dies a day or a few weeks later. Generally there's a long time of treatment, then a long period of time where people need care.